Not so much peat (what is this, the Scottish moors? ) but I've seen coal burning stoves before. One of the houses we looked at had a beautiful coal stove. It was about the only nice thing about the house.

My folks put a coal burning stove into the basement during the oil crisis in the 70s, when oil was crazy high but you could get a ton of coal delivered cheap. Keeping that going was not a fun job, and when they delivered it they would dump all the bags of it at the end of the driveway, lugging it up to the house was not much fun either.

Had one helluva storm yesterday afternoon here that lasted almost 2 hours (basically formed over us and didn't move) but I didn't get to see alot of it cause I was at work..On the way home though last night, there was a lot of limbs in the roadway and my house was apparently without power for 3 hours

Not really. It was starting to look rough when I got off the subway in Brooklyn, but I just went in the basement and didn't hear or see anything else for the rest of the night (because the basement doesn't have windows).

The line weakened just enough by the time it got near the Delaware River that I only heard thunder a few times, nothing close, lots of wind and rain though. Glad the power didn't go out, got a loaf of bread going in the bread machine.